


sensor

by ashbuhdash



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Hogwarts, Draco is a pit fighter, F/M, Hermione is undercover, Neither of them has a shred of self-preservation instinct, Technology and science are things, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29906736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashbuhdash/pseuds/ashbuhdash
Summary: She tosses her head, shaking off "unqualified" with disdain. "Well, I have watched you in the pit, for the last four months. I know you are a better fighter than you have let on. I know you need a standard bearer, and I have my means. And," she pauses, and he realizes she has fixed him with a look, "I know who you are."Another round of that adrenaline cocktail, this time undiluted, straight up. He should name it. Lady in Red."Is that so?" he answers neutrally, calculating."Mmm," she nods. "Something about you always struck me as off. Parkinson too. So I did some fairly painstaking research. Called in some favors from friends in high places," her mouth curls into a self-satisfied smirk.The window of opportunity is narrow, he thinks. Decision made. Don't fuck this up.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy





	1. Chapter 1

**budapest**

**I.i**

He watches and waits. As he does, the chit flips in his palm. Through the neon lit haze, he sizes up his three opponents. All of them are new to him, their strength yet to be tested against his own.  
  
 _First_ : most formidable, a hulking man mostly invisible in the dim light, save by the way the neon reflects off his smooth, dark features. He is all muscle, stretching and giving his neck an intimidating pop, a veritable behemoth of a human.  
  
 _Second:_ across from him, the figure is all wiry muscle, with Celtic knots tattooed and twisting across every inch of his chest and arms. This one gives off a furious energy, probably a street brawler - but he isn't a pit fighter. Where economy of energy and action is everything, this wildly vibrating one won't last.  
  
 _Third:_ uneasily, his attention turns to the last fighter, who leans against the graffitied, stained pit wall - a fearsome thing, sparse and matted fur only barely hiding a severely emaciated body. A deep, echoing hunger emanates from him as he picks at teeth that have been sharpened into points.  
  
Every now and then the pit turns out a real monster, and an automatic, half-hearted prayer goes out from Draco to whatever gods might be listening - _not this one_.  
  
And that leaves him: _four_. Nearly two years in the pit have left him lean and pale, with innumerable broken bones and lesions knit back together with healing spells. _And yet, still prone to too much poetic observation,_ he reflects bitterly.

And yet, no one is quite as good as he is. You would have to be very, _very_ good to do what he does.  
  
The chit dances across his knuckles, as though moving of its own will, and he palms it to shake out his arms in preparation, testing the spring of muscle and tendon. A hiss from the gallery above responds.  
  
The pit yawns around the four of them and Draco's eyes, naturally following its walls where they rise above the fighters, search in vain for his critic. Ringing the round walls, a glittering gold railing brightly demarcates the fighters' pit from the bearers' stands. How far the dark space extends beyond that golden division is anyone's guess - how many bearers, he has no idea. He's never been up there. But he can feel numerous eyes, hear muffles of their conversation as the room hums in anticipation. He can sense rather than see their presence, radiating wealth and status.  
  
He squints through the pit haze, past the neon, into the dark. Here a smear of red gown catches the light, there a sharp silhouette blocks it, there billowing hair - instinctively he searches for the sharp black bob of his standard bearer. She is somewhere among them.  
  
He always wants to be up there with the bearers. Idiotic ideas like _birthright_ always chase their way through his thoughts. But tonight there is a deeper tenor to the longing: he wants it so badly, so emotionally beyond the logic, that he might choke on it. He is hard as a rock and it might be enough just to touch them, to breathe that rarified air.  
  
 _No good can come from this line of thinking,_ he self-criticizes, and masters his breath and heart rate, focusing on what he can control.  
  
What he can control is this: he tastes the opioids and opulence between his teeth, whirring behind his eyes. _Don't fuck this up_ , the memory of her words reverberate.  
  
Pans had warned it, implored it, _don't fuck this up_ , as she had offered him the back of her hand, laced and powdered. He'd leaned into her and inhaled, the mind-saving hit same as ever, before she, his standard bearer, his provider, his lifeblood in this fucked up world, shoved him backwards into the pit.  
  
She's up there somewhere among the shadows behind the glittering railing.  
  
Only the winning fighter gains back his humanity for a night, and is welcomed into their ranks for that long. But as far as these bearers are concerned, he, the Sárkány who never wins, is lower than dirt.  
  
 _Don't fuck this up_. He owes her that much, doesn't he? His brain is beginning to whirl, everything in his periphery beginning to smear. It's almost time. He forces his attention back to the fighters, and focuses on his heart and breath. Steady and long, in and out, drawing as much oxygen as possible into his brain and muscles.  
  
The behemoth growls, the celt looks like he is going to come out of his skin, and the wolfman waits, like him.  
  
 _Don't fuck this up._  
  
The lead bearer steps forward, her wand raised. In response to her incantation, a shimmering barrier forms just below the railing and begins slowly pushing down. Instinctively, he feels a tightening in his lungs, and he draws in one final breath and holds.  
  
On her signal, their four chits launch into the air, arcing gracefully towards one another, magnetic like lovers.  
  
The four of them suspend, as time slows.

Draco subtly nods his energy.  
  
SNAP. Two pairs hit each other and stick, and before the chits hit the ground, the fighters are already upon each other.  
  
 _Finish him fast._ The behemoth lunges at Draco, who draws out a punch and evades, and then sweeps in under the swing with his own hit to the solar plexus. _Fucking hell,_ it is like punching a granite wall. Iron-clad immovable _fucking granite_ wall. The behemoth roars and slams an elbow into Draco's left shoulder, which explodes in white hot pain and knocks a precious gasp of air from his lungs. _Faster!_  
  
Draco dodges as a second blow grazes him, but the behemoth is gasping heavily. _More muscle, more oxygen,_ he thinks grimly. This one is already close. In his darkening periphery, he sees the wolfman, scrabbling on the Celt's back. _Faster._  
  
He feints left, and the behemoth swings wildly for Draco's injured shoulder, the giant man beginning to panic as he feels the vice around his lungs tighten. More importantly, the wide cross-swing leaves him defenseless, and in an instant Draco has sent a sharp jab to his neck, collapsing the windpipe, and behemoth down -  
  
SLAM. Instantly Draco is on the ground, the fall absorbed into his shoulder in unspeakable agony - he knows rather than feels - and he instinctively draws his legs in and up, slamming the Celt off him and into the pit wall. _Not the wolfman, and not fast enough,_ he thinks. _Miscalculation there._  
  
 _So recalculate NOW._  
  
The celt is struggling to rise, the haze of the pit swirling around him, a smear of red across the graffitied wall where Draco's kick threw him. Massive claw marks are openly pouring blood down his back and the right side of his face. But for all the injuries, he is nearly up.  
  
Draco himself is no better, and perhaps worse. The left side of his upper body is completely useless, his shoulder definitely dislocated _dead-fucking-weight_ , and he's struggling to breathe, his traitorous heart beating too hard. The room is tunneling and he knows there are seconds left before he blacks out from oxygen depravation. Perhaps ten. He forces his lungs to draw one final shallow breath...and hold.  
  
The celt charges, and time slows. _One more move. Don't fuck this up._  
  
Like the behemoth, the celt has zeroed in on the weak point, Draco's shoulder. But that, as ever is the difference in the pit. The weak point, versus the fatal point. At the last second, Draco twitches so that the blow is absorbed by his chest, and allows the momentum to carry them both down. With a subtle, last flip of energy, he is on top of the celt, the heel of his hand pressed into the man's neck with all the dead weight of his body bearing down. The celt scrabbles beneath him, and Draco can no longer see anything but black stars...but he can feel the convulsing throat beneath him.  
  
He locks and pushes.  
  
And then the celt stills, and the last vestige of control collapses along with his lungs.  
  
The gallery roars.

  
...

  
Draco swims back up to consciousness, searching for the surface, and it's like breaking through drowning water. He gasps in lungfuls of air, and though his vision is still dark, he can dimly feel the prickling of magic all over and within as the healers work their magic, bringing him back from the brink. A pair of hands are on his skull and he can feel the familiar, dreamy swirling of their magic working with the drugs to reboot his poor brain.  
  
He is beginning to see light and shapes again, when a firm grip pries open his fisted hand, and shove something hard into his palm.  
  
The chits - four now sealed together - and he remembers. He won.  
  
Dread and revel flood his system, and he feels his body convulse in response. Then suddenly he is being pulled up, a magical vice raising him to standing and his hand with the chits firmly above him into the air, the pain still ripping through his half healed shoulder, and the lead bearer is shouting, "Sárkány, the Victor!"  
  
And the world, the whole goddamned thing still a chaos of neon blur and the glittering gold of the gallery rail, erupts in noise and motion in response, the name _Sárkány!_ echoing off the walls in both jubilation and jeers. And if only he could bottle up this incandescent pain, it just might have been worth every bit to get here.  
  
He had never dreamt it could feel so, so good. So like himself. So like glory.

  
...

  
  
Consciousness again, this time coming on too quickly.  
  
 _The first:_ awareness comes first in his back muscles, likely in spasm, definitely not completely healed, and absurdly worse for having slept rough on the stone riverbank. Both his body and mind feel decades older than his years, and absently he wonders how quickly this life would physically kill him.  
  
 _The second:_ how much he had once loved this city. He keeps his eyes shut, grasping for the lingering edges of the fading dream. He had dreamt of the time he and his parents had visited Budapest as a child – his father proud and straight-backed, his mother resplendent in her silk scarves, the city surrounding then full of palpable, ancient magic. You could feel it in the very stones – the old world magic of the Romans, the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarians throbbing in every cobble, layered atop one another and alive like nowhere he had been before.  
  
The dream had been untouched by the corruption of reality: that magic of the city now poisoned and putrid. And his parents...  
  
 _The third: Pans_ , he thinks helplessly, sending the name out into the void. He has betrayed her three times. There wouldn't be another chance to make it right.  
  
The first night he had won, it had been an accident. He'd failed to feint at the last moment, as he'd been instructed to. As he'd done for two long years, dependably and agonizingly. She'd been furious: anger as high as the pit walls.  
  
The second night was worse. Something he had never seen had been in her eyes: fear.  
  
The third night, she was gone before the end of the fight. She must have known something had broken within him: the part that could feint at the last was irreparably not working. No matter how he went into those three fights, that part of his brain was gone when victory was at hand.  
  
 _Don't fuck this up._ He had. He had won when he should have lost.  
  
He wondered briefly whether she had fled, or been taken, and if he would ever see her again. He hoped she would be okay.  
  
Without a standard bearer, the Sárkány was considered worthless, and had been kicked out of the pit fighters' barracks. He'd sheltered the last night tucked against the stone banks of the Danube, the twin cities of Buda and Pest rising on both sides around him.  
  
He still hadn't opened his eyes, but could feel weak sunlight on the other side. His back hurt abominably, and he could feel the hollow aching of the drugs wearing off after a fight. _Ten minutes of wallowing,_ he decided. He would allow himself that weakness.  
  
And then he would get up, figure out how to quietly access his accounts, and find somewhere new to hide. He could only hope the money was still there. If it wasn't...well, he'd have to adapt. He had no idea how.  
  
"You are a difficult man to find."  
  
He starts at the voice, and his back muscles immediately seize. With a groan he opens one eye, staring into the sunlight and trying to make out the silhouette. A mass of hair causes his stomach to dip, as it trips the memory of a hooded red dress and wild hair in the shadows. This woman, he has spoken with her before. And as she moves to block the sun, the backlit figure comes into clarity.  
  
"Hello. My name is Her-"  
  
"I know who you are," he cuts her off, and winces his eyes shut, unable to process. He did know who she was, but how in Merlin's infinite cocked-up wisdom had she found him. And why? It has been years since they've seen each other, not that she would remember him.   
  
A potent cocktail of panic and opportunity pours into his veins. Shaken over ice, served in a tall glass of anxiety.  
  
"Right," she replies, unfazed. "May I sit?" She does so without waiting for his response, settling herself on the stone wall and tucking her feet beneath her. "So...your bearer left you? Parkinson, was it?"  
  
"Hmm," he barely assents. "So it would appear." He masters his breath and heart rate. _Be careful._  
  
"Interesting, you were just getting on a roll too. A proper winning streak," she observes lightly.  
  
He grits his teeth and hauls himself up to a leaning position against the stone wall - whatever this conversation is, he is NOT having it from the ground.  
  
She swallows and he's glad he sat up - for all the lightness in her tone, he can now see her hands fidgeting slightly. She is nervous. Interesting.  
  
"Listen, war heroine, did you go to the trouble of finding me simply to recount the facts of my miserable existence?"  
  
"Don't call me that," she answers primly. "I have a name. And no, I'm not here to tell you things you already know. I found you to make an offer."  
  
"Oh God, Granger, I am delightedly all ears," he says, gritting through a spasm of pain as his back muscles convulse.  
  
Concern shoots across her face, her deep brown eyes widening. "Are you okay?"  
  
"Dandy, Granger. Never been better," he huffs on the exhale, and tries to suck in a steadying breath.  
  
Her brow furrows in response and she reaches into her jacket pocket, nudging a concealed wand towards him. He opens his mouth to protest, but immediately falls silent as a warm ease washes over his muscles.  
  
 _Magic_. It feels completely different when he's not high out of his mind. It has been so long...  
  
She releases the hold on his shoulder, as though surprised her wandless hand had been touching him.  
  
"So my offer. I could bear your standard."  
  
Well _that_ is unexpected. An undignified snort escapes him before he can stop it. "Granger, I can hardly imagine a less qualified person to hold that position." Under normal circumstances, he would never take this tone with a bearer, especially when he does desperately need one, but he hasn't the slightest idea what her game is and would bet his entire Swiss-goblin-held accounts that it isn't remotely in his interest. Nothing about this adds up.  
  
She tosses her head, shaking off "unqualified" with disdain. "Well, I have watched you in the pit, for the last four months. I know you are a better fighter than you have let on. I know you need a standard bearer, and I have my means."  
  
"And," she pauses, and he realizes she has fixed him with a look. "I know who you are."  
  
Another round of that adrenaline cocktail, this time undiluted, straight up. He should name it. _Lady in Red._  
  
"Is that so?" he answers neutrally, calculating.  
  
"Mmm," she nods. "Something about you always struck me as off. Parkinson too. So I did some fairly painstaking research. Called in some favors from friends in high places," her mouth curls into a self-satisfied smirk.  
  
 _The window of opportunity is narrow,_ he thinks. Decision made. _Don't fuck this up._  
  
"Granger, what on Earth are these delusions? I'm a nobody, just a pit fighter from the mud," he wheedles, and tests his back muscles. Her spell has done well, and he can move again. Good. _Breathe._  
  
She rises, and her smirk deepens into a grin. The lack of poker face, the belief she has the upper hand, almost makes him grin himself.  
  
Her chin lifts as she says, "I've found you in hiding, from what I'm not sure yet. But you have clearly gone to great lengths to hide your identity, Malfoy."  
  
With the last word, his family name, an unmistakable rush of magic leaves her, and her expression immediately shifts. "What the hell was that?"  
  
Draco stands and smiles. " _That_ , my upstart war heroine, is the reason my name has been hidden. My family name, somehow so cleverly found by you, is cursed and traced."  
  
"Traced?" Her wand is out so quickly he almost misses it, and her eyes are alive, darting.  
  
"Yes, Granger, and as the one who said it I do believe your magical signature will be the new target. So I suggest you listen before _they_ arrive." He stands and fixes her gaze for emphasis. "I don't know what you thought you were getting into, but a family name is hardly the whole picture, and I would hazard a guess that you need more. If we die here, the trail will go cold."  
  
Seconds are precious, but he pauses, firm: "Take me with you, and you will have a chance."  
  
"You baited me," she spits with fury. "You knew this would happen."  
  
"Indeed," he nods, as multiple cracks of apparition sound around them.  
  
His time in the pit has heightened Draco's ability to take in a moment fully. And so as time slows, he observes:  
  
 _First:_ five, then six, dark robes whirling into vision around them.  
  
 _Second:_ her eyes dart, calculating quickly, and the strands of her wild hair are alive with all the potentializing magic in the air.  
  
 _Third:_ her mouth sets in determination and she barrels at him, and as wands raise around them, she throws her arms about him and they twist into oblivion. There is a flash of pain in his leg, and then nothing, and inanely, Draco imagines the sharp cracks of disapparition following, and the Danube riverside left quiet and empty, but for the ripples chasing across the water of a city beginning to wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The AU in this story is tough to describe: I've admittedly taken a few liberties with the way the wizarding world functions, but most notably with technology and science living in closer proximity to magic. 
> 
> Additionally, an old form of magic, abused during and following the second wizarding war, is pushing the magical world closer to breaking - and a handful of degenerates have been drawn into the mix. Of course. Fair warning for language, a bit of brawling violence and drug abuse, dismantling mafia families, and remembering many things forgotten.
> 
> Without further ado...here goes nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

**budapest**

**I.ii**

Hermione scans her wrist identification and taps in her access code. Facial or retina recognition would certainly be easier - but the pit caters to a particular level of anonymity and therefore the two step authentication untied to physical identity persists. The pit regularly hosts a cabal of moguls of ill repute, daughters of crime lords - and her partner, Fleur, who Hermione supposes is a bit of both. Fleur is the reason someone like Hermione, an undercover public defender, even knows this place exists - let alone received an invitation to enter.

It isn't hard to find the flash of platinum blonde in the dark crowd. As ever, Fleur is luminescent tonight, buoyed by beauty and credentials alike.

"Bon soir," she growls and kisses Hermione's decidedly unglowing cheek once, twice.  
  
"Any action tonight?" Hermione queries, feigning casual.  
  
"Nothing more than the Sárkány back in the pit," Fleur smiles, gesturing to the fighters. _No_ , she means, without gesturing to the crowd of bearers, _but Parkinson is here_.  
  
Hermione schools the frustration from her face. Four months of undercover work, four months of the barbarism of watching fighters choke their brains and each other to the edge of death. Four months of watching bets change hands, crossing palms and border lines and industries - all in the name of entertainment, or at the very least under its guise.  
  
Four months of nothing to show but a growing revulsion for humanity.  
  
Hermione repeats the names to herself: _Parkinson, Rowle, Avery, Lestrange_. Old names, extinguished from Britain in the years following Voldemort's prosecution and sentencing, each attached to patriarchs wanted for crimes against humankind.  
  
When Hermione had come to M with a desire to prosecute the old families, the elderly Scot had quietly hired her, and connected Fleur as her handler. And within two weeks, Hermione had left her quiet life in Somerset, and moved indefinitely to a tiny hovel in Budapest, to monitor and gather evidence.  
  
Fleur had led her to the pit, and Pansy Parkinson, the only heir to one such house. Not a target, but an ally. Perhaps. For all Hermione and Fleur could tell, Parkinson held neither previous ties to her family, nor her old life. To all eyes, she spent her days ensconced in a quiet, well-protected street in the old Buda castle quarter: and her nights bearing the standard for a young fighter nicknamed Sárkány.  
  
Hermione didn't trust what she saw. Sárkány lost, every time: which meant a never ending flow of finances ebbed from Parkinson elsewhere. Predictable movement, but figuring out _where_ those assets were flowing had proven...challenging. And Hermione both loved and reviled a challenge that refused to move.  
  
"Hermione. You should place your bet my friend," Fleur delicately taps the edge of her drink, "or you will miss the opportunity."  
  
Hermione nods, and makes her way to the boards. The bets are compulsory to her cover and presence. She pauses at the glowing headshot of Sárkány, thinking of Parkinson's fighter and not for the first time, wondering who he is. Fighters, like their standard bearers, were afforded anonymity in the pit. But ultimately she scans her identification over the silently cursing image of Finnegan. Funds drop from her account, which is running painfully low again. She has no gift for judging the fighters, and she quietly wonders what evils M has helped fund.  
  
The gallery above the pit has started to rumble with anticipation, as it always does in the minutes leading up to the fight. Hermione fights her way to the railing, which encircles the fighters ten feet below. Across the way, she can see Parkinson's sleek silhouette, dark hair a razor slice against her deep green jacket.  
  
 _I don't belong here,_ Hermione thinks helplessly for the thousandth time. Parkinson and Fleur's world is entirely unlike her own. She glances at Fleur, impossibly elegant and sharp, armed with a PhD in neuroscience and chemistry, and with the distinct misfortune of being both descended from a family of druglords AND being compromised from a young age. While studying abroad in England, Fleur had been quietly convicted of smuggling illegal substances - and her underage plea bargain had meant spying on behalf of M.  
  
Accepted into the underbellies of society with no question, her family's supply of substances was responsible for keeping the pit fighters intact. Turned agent Fleur might be - but her study of the mind and synthesis of science and magic had created the pit drugs: the only thing that protected fighter brains from the continual oxygen depravation that kept their fights short, desperate, and violent – and the bets placed on them flowing at a steady pace.  
  
The hiss of bearers and furious curses of fighters below shakes Hermione out of her reverie. Her eye draws to the brightest flash in the pit: the pale, taut muscles of the Sárkány. His platinum hair, so like Fleur's, is razed inexpertly close to his skull, and black tattoos gauntleted his forearms. He is still tonight as ever, taut and ready to spring, fingers flexing and flipping his chit.  
  
She has watched this one fight so many times, she knows exactly how each hit he absorbed would splash in belated bruises. He had bled, snapped, broken, risen again beneath her gaze. She recognized the measured, still energy - so different than other fighters who vibrated with wrath and bravado. The mask ran deep with this one, and Hermione had been sure for so long that he didn't belong.  
  
The shifting neon light hits his shoulder, and for an instant the posture looks...Hermione tries to put a finger on it. _Aristocratic,_ the word flashes improbably.  
  
 _Harry is the one to have wild flashes of intuiton,_ she thinks ruefully. _You, pay attention to the details. Sharpen up, Hermione._  
  
At the front dais, a witch raises her wand, and the gallery and pit hum in anticipation, building. The air is alive: electric, potentializing, hanging energy.  
  
With a crack, the fighters launch their chits, and then their bodies at each other. Hermione suppresses a sudden well of emotion. Another night.

...  
  
  
Fleur's neck is inclined towards the Sárkány's eyes as she offers congratulations. Still half dressed in his fighter gear, his chest and shoulders are blossoming remarkably black and blue. Parkinson, standing next to him, is taut and pulsing. Her smile has slipped a hair, into a grimace, as her hands roam his torso.   
  
"He finally won," she comments quietly to Fleur, as both Parkinson and Sárkány's attention slip to a group of golden bearers.  
  
"Yes, surely Parkinson is pleased," Fleur says meaningfully. _Look at her_ , her eyes say.  
  
Hermione does: and she sees a note of desperation in the way Parkinson's hands flex. Something is wrong, something has changed.  
  
 _Finally_.  
  
The next night, Sárkány fought and won his match again. Each day following, Hermione researched with renewed vigor. Something had shifted for Parkinson, and the threads of the story felt just out of Hermione's reach. This Sárkány, perhaps going off the rails - could he be a connection? Or even better, a weak link that could be exploited?  
  
The third night, Hermione watches him bask in the glory of the bearers, and she thinks of the black holes: the places in history, in documents, in economics, where powerful crime families should be. But though all the gravity pulls, the source remains invisible. Parkinson, potentially associated, has remained inscrutable. But if the Sárkány is going off the rails...perhaps he can be broken. Or bought. _Enticed_ , Hermione's brain offers, and she quickly shuts this down.  
  
When Sárkány wins his third match in a row, Parkinson is conspicuously absent from her fighter's side. Hermione might never get the chance again, and so she watches him carefully as he moves amongst the bearers. When he finally slips into a hallway that leads to the fighters' barracks, Hermione rallies her fabled Gryffindor courage, raises her hood, and slips out after him him. She has no leverage, no answers in her research. But she has never had an opportunity to get close to him. Perhaps, just perhaps...  
  
Just around the door, her heart stops as her arm suddenly catches. His fingers, long and pale, are wrapped powerfully just above the crook of her elbow. The knuckles are still bloodied and bruised, and she recalls the knock-out punch he'd landed tonight, shattering his opponents jaw. He quickly releases, but he is very close to her, and in the darkened hallway his pupils are blown - still high from the protective drugs.   
  
"Regards to the bearer," he intones the protocol, bending his head quickly in courtesy, a soft smirk in place.

"Regards to the victor," she looks down, trying to ignore his pupils, but that leaves his lean chest and torso and the deep V of muscle at his hips and _this is so not the time, Hermione_. She settles on focusing on the the tip of his nose.

"You've wandered where you shouldn't be, bearer," he teases, his accent lightly patrician and British. Not Hungarian, as his fighting name would suggest. "You've gone off the path."

"Have I? Should I go back?"

"If you like. But you've been watching me." Not a question, a statement.  
  
"Everyone is watching you, Sárkány. Something of the point here, isn't it?"  
  
"Ah, but this Little Red," he gestures to her hooded crimson dress. "She does more so than most. And she has wandered far from home."  
  
"Wrong story," she teases. "There is a wolf in that one, not a dragon."  
  
He rumbles an approval. "So you know some of the Hungarian. Do you know the legend of the Sárkány, Little Red?"  
  
Of course she did. _To the library!_ the old voices of friends a world away echo in her mind. "Common folklore holds that a pike left in the mud will rise as a dragon," she neatly recites. "But the wizarding version is more specific: the dragon is cursed by a maid, to follow her hopelessly seeking her favor until his death."  
  
"Well summed, Little Red. Ten points." His face darkens, turning introspective, and his hands flex...searching.   
  
There is something unsettling in this exchange. Familiar, but she can't put a finger on it. "Who are you?" She had meant to think it, but the question, unsubtle and blatant, falls from her lips before she can stop it.  
  
He fixes her with a sharp look, and dips his head to peer at her, trying to make out her face shadowed by the hood. The air crackles around her, and she can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.  
  
"I am what you say," he finally breathes, a rueful gesture at himself. "A tool raised from the mud, cursed to pursue and never possess." He reaches out a hand reflexively to twist a stray curl that has escaped from her hood.

Instinctively she inhales at the closeness.  
  
"Goodbye, Little Red," he nods, and ducks further back into the hall.  
  
"Wait," she darts a hand forward, grabbing at his arm, and then releasing - as he had done to her. It is so fast, and he's still high, so she hopes he doesn't register the darting of magic between them.  
  
Unsure what to do or say, she nods back and swallows. "Be well, Sárkány."

...  
  
  
  
On the fourth day, Fleur smiles in her low way at a record keeper while Hermione slips through. The pit archives, halfway across Buda, are covered in dust. Rather than searching the digital archives, Hermione heads straight to the cabinets with their antiquated hard copies.  
  
In a cabinet marked two years old, Hermione finds a signed registration slip. Parkinson's fast and looped scrawl is recognizable, and beside it a single name, smudged and hardly legible.  
  
 _Malfoy_.  
  
When she exits, high as a fighter herself, Fleur is examining her nails while the record keeper stares numbly ahead. "Confunded," she confirms Hermione's unasked question. "Immensely more efficient."

Once they're outside, Hermione can't help it, and she bursts, "I've found something, Fleur. A name. A start."

"Good," Fleur's face keeps the same placid, indifferent expression, her tone cool. Hermione may as well have commented that the train was running on schedule. "Keep it to yourself for now."

Hermione glances askance at her. In the last four months, she's learned to trust the instincts Fleur has honed her entire life. If Fleur thinks the information is dangerous, there's a good chance it is. 

As they walk through the streets, Hermione walks taller than she has in weeks, mentally turning the name over in her mind. A thrill runs down her spine.

...

  
  
Later that night, the pit is pulsing: dark and raucous with energy as the first fighters prepare. But the Sárkány, _Malfoy_ , she reminds herself, is absent.

Which is concerning, but nevertheless: after months of nothing, _something_ is happening. Hermione swallows a burst of adrenaline and excitement. He was surely fighting fixed matches for Parkinson. Her gut, denied evidence for so long, has been proven right.   
  
She checks the rosters, and finds he and Parkinson have been removed entirely. Gently she reaches out for the trace she placed on him last night. It feels warm and present: Malfoy is alive and not far.  
  
All she has to do is find him, and do what she can to turn him. If she can gain his confidence - or perhaps leverage him, she thinks with some unease - he might be able to lead her to some answers about Parkinson. Would M finance her bearing his standard? She's unsure, but resolved to do what is needed.  
  
Hermione remembers this rush - before jumping in to something intriguing, dangerous, and waiting to be unravelled.  
  
She hides a smile in her hand. All she has to do is find him, and everything will change.


End file.
